Meet Your Match

5.5

For our first date, Hanna materialized in a long-sleeved royal blue dress—pearls perfectly at home on her skin, hair pulled back except for two long strands that remained to kiss the sides of her face.

As Hanna stopped to adjust an ankle strap, I considered my own eeny-meeny-miny-moe selection from the show's offerings: a white one-shoulder open-side top, and...a whole lot of thigh with some skirt. My spiral earrings and chunky necklace were borrowed as well.

The underwater restaurant displayed magnificent ocean life, glass winding over our heads and below our feet—surrounding us in a protective bubble. Our table, the only one there, was at the center of that bubble.

I got there first and stood waiting so we could take our seats together.

Nearly everything was transparent.

It could've been a dream...

Passing me, my date gave me the same thrill.

The criss-crossing fabric that covered a very small amount of Hanna's back was tame compared to how mesmerizingly her entire body reflected the water.

We sat.

I didn't dare look too long at her—at the red lipstick that might as well have been blue—afraid I'd need to be resuscitated in front of all these creatures.

After making a partial recovery (part of me would never), I beamed around us. "It's gorgeous, isn't it?"

"Not as distracting as you," Hanna said—in such a neutral tone that I almost agreed out loud before I comprehended what she'd said.

No matter how many times my brother would replay the noise I made then, I'd lie to the end that it had been the result of a shoe bumping a chair leg (and accept my new name: Chair Leg).

Identical lists had been tucked into our menus—questions to ask each other during the date. Our food ordered, Hanna and I checked them out.

"How do you feel about the first one?" In my only relationship, asking "How do you feel about marriage?" wouldn't have seemed so innocent. But this, here? This was a partnership...one that had required conversations about real and fake...and would need many clarifications going forward.

"Marriage? It's an opportunity," Hanna said simply.

Get it together. What did she say?

An opportunity. An opportunity to mess up, but I didn't dare say that—my mothers would yank my ears off.

"What do you think, Halle?"

"Hmm..." Past my seashell heels and the clouds of tiny fish, I could almost glimpse all those kissing brides and grooms. "I used to daydream about it...when I was nine or ten. Watching women get married in those old-fashioned dresses on TV, you know. But I must've liked the dresses more than anything else." After the bride walked down the aisle, I lost interest. "Haven't thought about it recently, though. My moms—"

"You have two?"

We blinked in unison.

She'd startled us both.

"Uh, yeah..." I said.

"Sorry—you were so surprised when we got matched, I didn't think..."

Had Hanna mistaken me for a homophobe, or had she fallen into the exact trap I'd fallen into? "Ah, well...that's the work of pretty much all the media out there. I mean, hey, we're the first two women to be matched—ever. The default for TV is still heterosexuality. It's why I was floored by the show deviating from that. I couldn't have predicted it in a million years."